memento morrill

Monday, November 13, 2006

DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE ?!?!

I bumped into Axl Rose this weekend.

I was in New York. I had just been to my friend's comedy show and we were racing back to catch the train. We were standing outside Madison Square Garden having a hot dog when Pete's eyes focused behind me and he said "That's Axl Fucking Rose!"

I whirled around to see that Pete was, in fact, correct. Axl Rose was approaching with a model on his arm, a full entourage, and a face like a PSA against Botox.

What happened next I can only explain as a scene from that Cold Case show on CBS. You know how the show always ends with some nostaglic music and all the characters flip back and forth with younger versions of themselves?

I imagine how the scene must have looked from Axl's point of view as a version of the Cold Case ending. I imagine him looking at Pete and I standing there - just then, someone crosses between us and we're magically converted to our fifteen-year-old selves, shouting "Wooo! Hey Axl! Woo!" and making the devil sign with our hands.

This election season, I volunteered for the Lamont campaign in CT. One of my jobs on election day was to stand near the polling place in my town, wave a sign, and generally try to get people to vote for Lamont. This necessitated standing outside on a street corner from the time the polls opened in the morning until they closed at night. If you ever want to get a feel for a town or its people, I highly recommend standing in one spot for fourteen hours. You'll see things in a whole new light - trust me.

Here are the highlights:

Highlight #1.

Around 1pm, I witnessed what I'm sure must have been an essay from The Onion.

I saw a guy coming out of the polling place. As he walked out, his buddy across the street recognized him. My town is pretty rural, but the polling place was in a fairly active part of town. I wouldn't call it a town-square, per se, but it was a lively place to be at the time. There were lots of people around. Anyway, when the dude across the street saw his friend, he shouted:

"Hey Davy, who'd ya vote for?"

Davy yelled across the street with a full voice:

"I VOTED FOR THE JEW!!"

Davy's pal replied:

"THAT'S WHO I'M VOTIN' FOR - I CAN'T STAND THESE RICH GUYS WHO THINK THEY'RE ALL BIG!"

...

Later that night, as I listened to Ned Lamont concede the election to Joe Leiberman, I couldn't help but imagine that the next day's headline would read:

"Jew Defeats Rich Guy Who Thinks He's All Big"

Highlight #2 -

Around 11am, a woman showed up and explained that she was a write-in candidate for State Senate. She was there, you see, to wave her sign and to try to garner as many write-in votes as she could. It is important for me to emphasize that this woman was "on the campaign trail," so to speak.

She was wearing matching sweatpants and a sweatshirt. The sweatshirt was grey and the pants were yellow, but I say they were matching because the each had the same colors of paint spattered all over them. I suppose she might have been painting her house that morning - her clothes certainly support that hypothesis. And she was sweaty. Really sweaty.

As I stood there waving my Ned Lamont sign, she waved her sign which included her name of course followed by the words "Write-In Candidate for State Senate."

The thing about her sign, though, was that it was written with a sharpie on a piece of loose-leaf paper. Not any loose-leaf paper, mind you, but a piece of spiral-bound loose-leaf complete with the fuzzy edges still attached.

She had just been ejected from the polling place, where she had apparently been waving her sign and soliciting votes not only within the 75 foot perimeter, but within the actual building itself. A police officer ordered her to remove herself to the legal campaign zone where I was standing.

When she arrived, she was angry with the cop. Furious really. She complained about the right-wing consipiracy that sought to silence voices like hers. "I've got this cop's number now! I know who he's working for! He won't get away with this!"

At that point she reached into her pocket and pulled out her "Enemies List" - she had an actual Enemies List. It was a piece of loose-leaf paper - which I would have suspected probably came from the same notebook as her Campaign sign had it not been for the fact that it was long and aged.

She had been carrying this list, I assume, for quite a while. Years I'd guess. On the top of the page, the words "Enemies List" were appropriately scrawled in red ink. The list itself filled the rest of the page in tiny letters - there were dozens, if not a hundred, names.

When she scribbled the cops name on the bottom, I immediately pretended to take an important cell phone call. I did not want to end up on that list - and I felt sure that only way to stay off was to avoid talking to this woman at all. After 45 minutes of chatting on my cell phone to a number of people - some real, some feigned - the woman finally left and I was safe again.

After she was gone, her words continued to haunt me. She had stood there for almost an hour wearing a dirty, mismatched, paint-spattered sweatsuit, waving a ragged-edged campaign sign and when I asked her why she was running, she replied:

"I'm here to restore some professionalism to the motherfucking Senate!"

Last week, I was mistaken for a celebrity. I was at a store in Manchester buying curtains and curtain rods - I mention what I was buying because it is important to the story, as you'll see. At the register, the woman ringing me up gave me a surprised look before politely saying:

"You remind me of someone on tv!"

"Really?" I said, "who?"

"I'm not sure... it's on the tip of my tongue."

"Well, I hope it's someone good," I told her.

She resumed ringing up my purchases.

Thirty seconds or so later, she had it.

"Oh! I know," she said. "That show where TIDE fixes up peoples houses!"

I was confused for a second. Finally, I asked: "Do you mean Ty Pennington?"

"No! Not TIDE! But that's the show I mean.... You look like one of the gay ones...."